


Poisoned Honey

by vyatka



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Embarrassment, Gen, Manipulation, Past Brainwashing, Russian Bucky Barnes, Soviet Union, Starvation, Waxing, respiratory ailments, so that's not a tag? ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:51:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17651342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: He still doesn't believe it. Russia would neversellhim. To the Americans, no less.





	Poisoned Honey

The way the Soviet Union ends is a failure not because it has fallen, but because it hasn't. The Soviet Union doesn't fall. It dissipates. The Untied States brought guns, and all they used was a needle. 

It is a failure, too, because the Winter Soldier isn't there to see it. 

A week before, he kills Howard and Maria Stark, moderate threat level, takes their package and hands it to Colonel Karpov and receives one brisk clap on the shoulder for his trouble. A brisk clap and an afternoon of beatings from the sleeper agent Josef, blonde and uncontrollable. When the Soldier is frozen, it is with a note of trepidation about his next awakening. He doesn't dream in cryo, but if he did, it would be fitful and restless. 

The Soldier is intended to be removed from cryostasis in the first week of January, 1992. Almost a month is deemed too long to leave him out of the ice. This wasn't always the regulation. Once, almost two decades ago, the Soldier had frequently been awake for months at a time, although he doesn't remember, now. Now he is lucky if he gets two weeks out. 

Just before the Soviets ice him for the last time, he reflects that it is probably for the best. If he is only taken out for missions, he has less time to be bored. He can't imagine being out all the time - out but caged like a hunting hawk, hooded. 

Because he is only intended to be frozen for three weeks, the technician Anna Evgenyevna Shurenka doesn't prepare him for long-term storage. 

Procedure: she checks his teeth, peeling his upper and lower lips back with blue-gloved fingers. The Soldier watches her while she does. She has very pale coloring, and her eyebrows are almost nonexistent. Her hair, tied into a limp knot at the base of her neck, is half-escaped. He's struck by the bizarre urge to tuck it back in. 

"Red gums," she tells her clipboard, scribbling something in indecipherable Cyrillic cursive. "If you were to find yourself with scurvy, it would not be pleasant for you at all, Soldier." 

She checks his eyes to ascertain that his pupils shrink in the light, probes his lymph nodes with her fingers, and determines him "within a reasonable standard of health", although she does inform her assistant that his gums and teeth should have an eye kept on them. 

Anna smoothly removes his sleeve, and then the entirety of the outer layer of his armor. 

"Ordinarily, I would give you new clothes," she says. She is very talkative for a cryo technician, and for a Russian woman in general. Not that the Soldier knows many. "But you will be back in not too long, so I say, what is the point?" 

He says nothing. 

"The American president is speaking with Gorbachev," she continues. "Something is going to happen." 

This is news to the Soldier. He is as invested in the glory of the Soviet state as anyone. A note of concern strikes him. 

"There is no reason to worry, Winter Soldier." She nudges him to stand. Upright, he's much taller than she is. He can see the top of her silky little head. 

He climbs in. 

 ***

Three years later, the Winter Soldier's cryotube ends up in storage in the Soviet frozen zone between Moldova and Ukraine. It has a population of less than two hundred. Its languages are a smattering between Moldovan Romanian, Russian, and Ukrainian, making it one of two countries to claim Ukrainian as a national language. There is a good chance that he might stay there forever, possibly eventually shuffled into some Romanian industrial collector's haul, but it isn't.

Karpov tracks it down. 

 ***

The unfreezing, ironically, always feels like being burned alive. 

Anyone who has come back from the brink of frostbite can tell you - defrosting is pain, and although the Soldier has always borne it in relative silence, there is nothing quite like surfacing to consciousness while your veins themselves thaw. His skin often cracks while he's in the ice. When it begins to bleed, he is considered ready for the words. Even with his faulty memory, his unfreezing has a routine he's come to expect. 

The routine is diverted from. 

He is never alone during the process. Always, there are operatives around him. And yet this time, for the first time in his memory, he comes awake fevered, burning, and alone. The worst of the agony dies into tingles. His vision clears. The metal arm sheds its runoff, and he registers dimly that there is absolutely no one near him. 

Quivering and wet - sweat or melted frost or both - he hauls himself into a sitting position. Only to collapse instantly. Sitting up is a high demand on muscles that have gone years without moving. His head hits plaster, hard. 

This is wrong. 

Something is - 

His ears ring. Tinnitus kicks up in the absence of other sound. His eyes drip. His nose drips. He is still wearing half of his battle dress attire. 

He coughs, moans, and curls pitifully in on himself, fingers and toes twitching at random. His eyes squeeze shut. It's so  _bright._ Every muscle  _aches._

The Soldier coughs again, deep. This by itself is not unusual. There is often fluid in his lungs when he has been in the ice. The coughing takes him in a flurry, sudden and rapid, and it is so intense that it overtaxes the muscles of his abdomen and leaves him gasping, unable to draw breath. 

"He's having trouble breathing." English. Footsteps. "Jesus. Someone sit him up. How long as he been here?" 

"Just over four hours, sir." 

"No one else was here? Get him up." 

The Soldier tenses. A hand goes for his right arm and he bares his teeth and swipes with his left. Shoes staccato backward. 

"I thought he was supposed to be catatonic." 

"He probably was, an hour ago. This is what happens when you dither." 

He has not heard English in a long time, but he has lost none of it. Someone who says "dither" casually and humorlessly is probably an unfortunate sort of person to have for a superior, to most, but not to the Soldier. 

The one kneels close by him. He can feel the heat. 

"Don't even think about biting me," they say, and then someone pulls him upright. The world tilts. It falls into place. 

"Can you speak English?" 

"Yes," he rasps. His stomach twists. There's nothing in it, fortunately. 

"Well. Apologies for what happened to your commie overlords, although I cant say I'm sad about it." 

Spots burst in his vision. 

 ***

The Winter Soldier and a man in a suit go for a walk. The Soldier is not a creature who goes for walks often. His body isn't made for  _walking._ But because he has nothing else to do, because he is shivering and ragged from leaving stasis - new clothes notwithstanding - he follows the man in the suit out of the building. 

As soon as the sun hits his eyes, he hisses, throwing his arm up in a flare of pseudo-vampirism. It's better with his eyes closed, but it's as if the light has fingers prying at his locked lids. His hiss turns into a moan. 

"Here." Something presses into his metal palm. "Put these on." 

Dark glasses. Goggles. He almost breaks them, opening them and shoving them up his nose. (The bridge of his nose, not his nostrils.) 

"I should have given you those before we got outside. It's my mistake. I apologize." 

Sight newly tinted, the Soldier squints. 

His smile is thin-lipped. "You aren't very talkative." 

The Soldier says nothing. 

"I was hoping you'd give me something to work with." 

"Who are you?" 

"Don't worry about that. Not just yet. Lemonade?" 

The correct thing to do, he knows, is to refuse, and maybe even to smack the pitcher out of his hands to prove it. He would. Except the lemonade is pink. And he is thirsty. And there is no one around to see him, so his will crumbles just enough to say "...yes." 

The man smiles, like he's won something. If the lemonade hadn't been pink, the Soldier would be angrier about it. 

"I don't blame you for not trusting us, considering the history at play, but I hope you'll get over that, considering," he says, while the Soldier gulps it down. "Hopefully that won't come back up. We'll deal with it if it does, but your stomach needs to settle at some point. How soon after can you eat? Generally speaking."

"You talk a lot." The Soldier hiccups. 

"It's a flaw of mine." Again, that lazy smile. He wishes he would stop. He doesn't like being smiled at. 

He looks away. They're up somewhere high, a rooftop patio, somewhere he can't get away from easily. He wonders if it is intentional. The air smells different, here, and  _here_ must be the United States, which means he is very far from home. It's hot; must be summer. The feeling is foreign. A warm breeze tousles his hair, loving. 

"What year is it?" 

"1995." 

The Soldier coughs. "Who are you?" 

"A friend."

His lungs squeeze and he coughs again, hard. His immune system, although theoretically robust, spends so much time fighting off infection and disease that when he's out of cryo, he's often ridden with cold symptoms. It's a strain on the body. Even his. "Stop," he snaps. Infuriatingly, his voice cracks. "Why am I here." 

"Do you want it put simply?" 

Answering a question with a question. The Soldier almost stomps. He scratches the back of his ankle with his borrowed shoe, and is silent. 

"You no longer serve the USSR." 

Yes, he does. He clenches his teeth. 

"The USSR no longer exists. The Soviet Union has gone back to a smattering of suffering countries in Eastern Europe. Russia, though still a world power, is less relevant than it has been in centuries. You were a gift to the United States government." 

A gift. 

"A peace offering, rather." 

The Soldier coughs. 

"You were in rough shape when you arrived. All sorts of fluid in your lungs, which is probably what that cough - " 

"You're lying." 

The man arranges his face into sorrow. "I'm not." 

"I don't believe you," he says, flat. His metal fingers wrap and release. "It's not true." Plates churn, warming up. "You're  _lying_ to me." 

"Why would I lie to you?" 

"If you took me." 

" _I_ didn't do anything." 

"Your government." 

"No. From what I understand, the Rusk - the Russians were very clear. Without the goal of Soviet - " 

The Soldier stops listening. 

He swallows. The sun is still too bright, and all of his senses feel attacked. Even the breeze is too harsh on his skin. He shakes his head, and could scream when his hair tickles his jaw. Sensory overload builds and snaps, and he's angry, he's so angry he can't breathe, and his weapon of an arm whirrs and flexes to match his mood. 

He coughs. 

 ***

Just one year earlier, the Soldier is the happiest he can ever remember being, for two days .That doesn't say much, with the holes in his memory, but it is true. His nose is pink, and so are his cheeks; his eyes, watering but shining, are bright and live behind his snow-blindness goggles. Everywhere else, he's pale as milk, makes him a pleasing study in contrasts, had anyone been there to draw him. No one is there to draw him. He doesn't dissect the fleeting desire to be committed to paper, or to canvas, which is ridiculous. The Motherland doesn't have canvas to spare for something so silly. 

"Settle down, soldier," says an operative whose name he cannot remember. She is stern and mid-forties. "You are going to burn away all your energy." 

The Soldier pants. He shoulder-checks Mikhail Krilkov, whose name he does remember, and skitters through through the snow to dodge a semifriendly punch. 

"What has gotten  _into_ you, Winter Soldier?" Mikhail says wonderingly. "I've never seen you like this." 

"He wants attention," says the woman whose name he forgets.

The Soldier's dislike of her is not enough to put a damper on his mood. The real answer is something alone the lines of "zest for life", but he cannot remember the word for "zest", so he says zestily: "I cannot be happy?" 

Waspishly: "Trying to get one of us to play with you will end in someone's injury. The nature of our mission doesn't leave room for foolishness like this." 

"Relax, Yulia," says Mikhail, aiming a kick at the Soldier as soon as he bounds back into range. The Soldier dodges; they laugh. "If you spent most of your life in a giant ice cube, you might be rambunctious, too." He says to the Soldier, in a conspiratorial theater-whisper: "She is just angry that her application for furlough was rejected." 

The Soldier snorts, and abruptly squats. 

"See?" Yulia. "He has worn himself out, and how much further do we have to go?  _Oh, Yulia, he's just warming up, it's alright._ I told you. Now the Winter Soldier has expended himself doing absolutely nothing. We need to pace ourselves, I said, and - " 

A snowball hits her in the ear. 

She gasps. The hood of her parka blocked most of it. He doubts she was hurt. But the cold and noise have given her a start, and that is what he wanted.

Mikhail puts his hand over his nose and mouth, muffling. 

"Soldier," she begins.

"Yulia," Mikahil counters. "Can he help that he is bored? I - " 

A snowball crashes across his cheek. 

The Soldier, back on his feet, eyes them both with hesitant optimism, brash, his arms at his sides, and waits for the moment to turn. The longer it lasts, the more the tension ins his stomach pulses to anxiety. 

Then, "Oh, that's how you want to play?" Snow falls off Mikhail in clumps and he bends to pack a snowball of his own. It hits the Soldier in the arm. Yulia's hits him in the neck. They attack him two to one - fair, considering what the Soldier is - and laughing, breathing like bellows. (It's harder for them to move through the snow than it is for him. An undue portion of the Soldier's ungodly strength is in his legs.) 

The memory turns sour after that. 

But he remembers the snowballs. 

 ***

_Bucky?_

The Soldier, joylessly choking down the rubberiest hot-plate food ever cooked, looks up, and then doubles over, coughing, eyes watering. 

The scene is depressing. In the corner of an almost-deserted cafeteria, he picks blandly at his food and hunches away from the potential of conversation, although none is presenting itself. Evolutionary development students crane their heads over notebooks, murmuring. Under different circumstances, the Soldier would eavesdrop. As it is, his mind swims. He doesn't believe it. There is some deception at play. He is not motivated to violence, not just yet, but once he finds out the truth of the situation. Well. He flexes his gloved metal fingers. The Soldier is not a fan of westerners, lies, or western lies. 

There is no reason to fool himself that he is unsupervised or unmonitored, though it was cute of them to give him that impression, leaving him alone in what appears to be a university cafeteria but probably isn't, so he doesn't bother with subtlety when he addresses the bent-over students. 

"What happened to the Soviet Union?" 

They exchange glances. 

Silence stretches, and the Soldier flushes and doesn't break eye contact. His stare is lead-heavy. 

"Um," says one. "What do you mean?"

"Like, how did it end?" supplies her friend. 

His heart sinks. He feels it sink. It's just the vagus nerve, he reminds himself. It still feels like sinking. Withering. Drooping. Furling. 

An urgent need to stuff his rubbery eggs into his mouth. They still taste like shit, but he needs something in his teeth other than his own tongue. "Yeah." 

"I'm not...actually sure. Of the details. But I bet you could find 'em." 

"They're out there." Giggle. "Yeah." 

 ***

He still doesn't believe it. He doesn't want to. Russia would never fall in that way, and they would never  _sell_ him - to the Americans, no less! The idea that they would is preposterous. He's served the Motherland loyally for his entire life. He's served and served. They would never discard him. They would never give him to  _them._

Of course the Americans say he was an olive branch. They would never admit to their own thievery. Of course they would make up a story about a Soviet collapse. 

Someone will come for him. 

In the night, his lungs refuse to let him sleep. He coughs and coughs, sometimes unable to catch his breath, eyes watering. He has suffered from cryosickness before. This is worse. He coughs so hard a muscle in his abdomen seizes and cramps, and his shoulders shake. 

There are no other symptoms. His throat isn't sore. His nose doesn't run. He is without hot flashes or chills. He doesn't hallucinate. He hears voices. 

_Buck -_

He keens, miserable. Coughing. 

 ***

"It's the truth." 

"You lie." Sullenly greasy, he peels his lips from his teeth in an unwelcoming rictus. 

There is something condescending about Alexander Pierce. Perhaps it is the appearance of earnestness. As though there aren't guns pointed at the Soldier's head. He doesn't care about the guns. What he hates is the pretense. Americans are all liars. They're liars and cheaters and thieves, and he loathes every single one of them. 

"Does it upset you? Knowing they didn't want you?" 

"Does it upset you," the Soldier mocks, "To know that I plan to smash your head with my hands?" He would say more, if not for the cough. Stupid lungs. Stupid throat. 

Alexander Pierce waits it out patiently. "I don't think you'll do that." 

"You - " Rasputin's  _fucking_ cock, he can't even get a sentence out. He can hardly blame Pierce for not being afraid of him. How baleful can his gaze be when his eyes are wet and red? " - think I won't? Take the guns away, then." A noisy sniff. "Let's see how brave you are when - " His voice cracks. 

Pierce chuckles. (Anyone who chuckles is untrustworthy, the Soldier thinks venomously.) "You sound like you're in a lot of discomfort, there." 

His exhale rattles. 

"Now. I'm going to give you the truth, and you can choose to believe it or not. Sound fair?" 

The Soldier wants to snap his neck. He flares his nostrils. 

"The Soviet Union is no more. The Cold War is over. You were a peace offering from Russia to America. No one will hurt you, not unless you give us a reason. Serve the United States as loyally as you served in Siberia, and you'll live better than you ever did there." 

The Soldier has been trained to chew through his tongue before releasing intelligence in an interrogation. The alternative, he was taught, would be far crueller. Honorless. Russia has no room for traitors. 

"Or for you," Pierce says, not unkindly. The Soldier realizes he said the last bit out loud, and bites the inside of his cheek. 

"I am not a traitor." 

"You served them for years," agrees Pierce. "And they rewarded you for that service with nothing." 

"Stop," he hisses, and twitches. So do the guns. 

"I hope you know it wasn't your fault." 

The Soldier rolls his gaze upward, and it is heavy. Expressiveness is not a strong point of his, but he can pull it where it counts, in the details: he has dead, dollish eyes, and, paired with a coy curl at the corner of his mouth, he hopes for a flinch. Most men would at least blink. Pierce doesn't. "Why would it be my fault?" 

Pierce does nothing. Their eyes lock and hold. 

"It wasn't," he says. "It could not have been." 

"Of course it wasn't." 

_If_ this American is telling the truth about what happened to the Soldier's country -  _if_ \- then it wouldn't be the Soldier's fault. Right? How could it have been? He was in stasis. There is nothing he can do from within the ice. "I was in the ice." 

"Yes," he agrees again. "You were." 

 ***

They are trying to make him angry. 

He should kill them. He wants to, and when he wants violence he usually makes it. Instead he stares lifelessly at the window while a woman uses a flat little stick to smear something on his chest. It is warm. Its consistency is honey. It is very warm.

"This might hurt a little. On three." 

He ignores her. 

_It was not my fault,_ he insists, gritting his teeth. 

The feeling in his heart is almost unrecognizable. It takes him a moment to place. It's homesickness. 

The woman presses paper over the honey-substance and holds it down with her small hands. "On three," she repeats. "One - " 

She rips it off. 

The Soldier grunts and snaps his head up. The woman, not looking at him, has more of the honey on her stick. He eyes it the way a bull eyes a branding iron. His chest - suddenly pink and smooth where the evil honey-wax has been - tingles. "What," he says. 

"See, that wasn't so bad," she says, singsong. "Sit back." 

"What are you doing?" 

She slathers it back on. Her gloves are white instead of blue. They're wrong. "Don't you worry about it," she continues in that awful childish voice. "You're going to be smooth as a dolphin when I'm through with you." 

What an unsettling prospect. "Why?" 

She holds the paper over his heart. Her smile reminds him of 

 - his mother - 

For a moment, he can see, very clearly - more clearly than the real moment he's in, his vision cuts to his mind's eye - a crisp grayscale photograph. A woman. Her hair is dark. 

The Soldier doesn't have a mother. For all he knows of his parentage, he could have sprouted, adult, from the ground, sown and grown from dog teeth. 

The paper rips off and takes a neat square of hair with it.

"Well done," although he did nothing. 

She strips the hair methodically from his chest and then works down to his abdomen, where her work is less but takes more precision. His skin is raw and rosy. 

He has no more thoughts about his mother. 

"I wonder." She purses her lips. "I could neaten up your eyebrows, when we're finished." Her thumbs smooths over his temple. "Lift up your arm." 

The Soldier starts to lift the left. She shakes her head. "Other one, sweetie." 

He breathes out, heavy. 

_I could stop this,_ he thinks, obediently raising the right. He puts a hand behind his head. He remains still while she trims his underarm hair with tiny scissors and tears it off like she did the rest. It chafes. 

"Eyebrows, now, I think." 

In Siberia, the cryo technicians, who often doubled as nurses, were rarely talkative. When they were, it was solemn. The Soldier got his snippets of world news from them whenever something momentous happened. Occasionally he was congratulated on a mission well done. The most he ever received in terms of grooming were toothbrushes and damp clothes. It would have been a Herculean task to heat the entire compound's water, and the risk of hypothermia was not slight. Bathing amounted to wiping the blood and dirt away. And as for the removal of body hair? It was Siberia. 

The Soldier tamps down a flinch when it comes near his face. 

"Tilt your head back, hon." 

He tilts. A cough wells in his ribcage. It flutters up into the hollow of his throat. He holds it there, itching, and clenches his fists. 

"Hold still." 

The Soldier sneezes, coughs, rocks forward, and promptly tears off half of his own eyebrow. What's worse is that he doesn't notice until the aesthetician claps her hand over her mouth, giggling.

"I'm - " She can't stop laughing, and doubles over. "I'm sorry," she says, high-pitched. "I'm sorry, you just - it's so funny." She clears her throat. 

Heat crawls up his cheeks as he's staring at her, frowning with one-and-a-half eyebrows. He catches sight of it in the mirror to his side. It really is kind of funny. Instead of laughing, he clenches his teeth. "Stop." 

She dabs under her eyes with the pad of her ring finger. "I guess the eyebrows were a bad idea." 

"Yes," he snaps. He's still blushing. His weapon of an arm bristles like a living thing. 

"You're  _lopsided._ " 

Oh, the Soldier is plenty aware. 

"Maybe we leave the brows alone for now," she says. She has to hold in her giggles like bubbles. "Jesus, you look funny." 

 ***

He won't stay here. 

He hates it here. His old home was not fun or lovely, but he knew it, and he liked it, harsh unforgiving beauty, blood against the snow, the sky and the horizon blended the same milky white. Even if there is no one there, if it's true what they say, he's going back. 

Anyone who wants to stop him is welcome to try. He will rip out their throats with his teeth. 

 ***

Quietly, in the night, he bolts. 

He doesn't expect to get away. This is a bolt meant to test the boundaries of his prison, and from there to work out a plan for real escape. This run is a prod into mesh, a test of teeth against grating, probing for weak points. He gets further than he thought he would. 

What undoes him is a cough. 

His own lungs are his sabotage. He holds it in as long as possible but the itch is too strong, and even if he catches it in the crook of his arm, it's too late. The sound has been made. The alarm has been raised. Iron doors across the facility slam shut as one. No one even comes for him. They leave him locked in the hall he was in. 

For weeks. 

After ten days without food - there is a water fountain, so he at least is hydrated - he begins to contemplate sacrificing a meat finger or two to the unrelenting demand of his stomach. With his metabolism, ten days without food feels closer to thirty. 

He knows this game. He's played it. The Soldier has only to beseech one of the security cameras, and he will be fed, but he is ferocious (he thinks, digging furrows into the wall with his metal hand and grinding his teeth against the dual assault of his digestive and respiratory systems) and he won't be the first to break. They want him so badly? Then let it be  _their_ duty to keep him alive. 

Ten days stretches into twenty stretches into twenty-five and to his ultimate shame...he breaks. Weak and fevered and hallucinating, his will to survive shoves his pride from the cockpit and begs for food like a dog. He flinches from the light when they open the door, face half-pressed into the wall. 

_This is a failure,_ he tells himself fiercely while he eats and eats.  _This was a FAILURE,_ but his body is simply not interested in hearing it. He eats and eats and is sick then eats and eats again. Alexander Pierce sits across from him and the Soldier gives him no attention other than the occasional dutiful scowl. 

"You will not get me to like you," he warns. This is after he has eaten his fill and managed to keep it down, and slumps heavy-lidded in his chair. 

But he can't...he can't quite motivate himself to run again as soon as he gets back on his feet. He's biding time. He wants to go. He is not an American. And yet starvation is a powerful conditioning tool, and his instincts won't let him bring them so close to death again. His stupid body. His weapon, his enemy. 

Instead of doing anything productive, the Soldier does the next best thing: he sulks. Moodily, he wanders, and eats, and talks to Alexander Pierce, spouter of capitalist lies, although admittedly many of his philosophies would be shared by Colonel Karpov. His cough doesn't go away. He grows used to it. 

 ***

It doesn't matter. He won't be here long. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was not alive in the nineties and we never studied the Cold War in school so I am shaky on the whole timeline of the end of the Soviet Union. If there are glaring inaccuracies, that's why. 
> 
> Please comment/kudos if you enjoyed! If you didn't enjoy, that's okay, please move on without letting me know. 
> 
> I'm also on [Tumblr](http://soldatka.tumblr.com/).


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